Re: World Bank To Proceed With Yacyreta Dam Probe (fwd)
David Johnson (mailto:pinefarm@UNIONTEL.NET)
Sat, 15 Mar 1997 07:41:33 -0800
Message-ID: <332AC32D.680E@uniontel.net>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 07:41:33 -0800
From: David Johnson <mailto:pinefarm@UNIONTEL.NET>
Subject: Re: World Bank To Proceed With Yacyreta Dam Probe (fwd)
To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
kerry miller wrote:
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
> /** headlines: 160.0 **/
> ** Topic: World Bank To Proceed With Yacyreta Dam Probe **
> ** Written 8:11 PM Mar 10, 1997 by econet in cdp:headlines **
> /* Written 1:03 PM Mar 7, 1997 by mailto:irn@ax.UUCP in rainfor.worldb */
> /* ---------- "ENVIRONMENT-LATIN AMERICA: World Ba" ---------- */
>
> From: Glenn Switkes <irn>
> Copyright 1997 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
> Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
>
> *** 03-Mar-97 ***
>
> Title: ENVIRONMENT-LATIN AMERICA: World Bank to Proceed With Dam Probe
>
> by Abid Aslam
>
> Washington, Mar 3 (IPS) - The World Bank's executive directors
> have broken three weeks of political deadlock and are authorising
> a full-scale probe of the troubled Yacyreta dam.
>
> In so doing, they have calmed fears that Argentina -- which
> borrowed from the Bank to fund the dam -- would block the probe.
> Such a move would have dashed the hopes of thousands of
> Paraguayans who claim the dam has devastated their lives and
> livelihoods and are hoping for redress.
>
> Attention now turns to the Inter-American Development Bank
> (IDB), where executive directors have yet to decide whether to
> launch a separate investigation of IDB lending to build the dam.
>
> Yacyreta stretches for some 67 kms and joins the Argentine and
> Paraguayan sides of the Parana river. The dam is set to flood the
> homes and workplaces of some 50,000 people, most of them in
> Paraguay. Both countries own equal shares of the dam, but
> Argentina borrowed the money to build it.
>
> Buenos Aires had been dead set against a probe, and was
> supported at a Feb. 6 World Bank board meeting by other developing
> countries who see the Bank's independent inspectors as a threat to
> their national sovereignty.
>
> But board members have been under pressure from their
> parliaments and an international network of non-governmental
> organisations (NGOs). Questions about the pending investigation
> reportedly were raised in the U.S. Congress and British and
> Italian parliaments.
>
> So the directors struck a compromise Friday, deleting the word
> ''investigation'' from their decision. Instead, the Bank's
> independent inspection panel is to conduct what officials are
> calling a ''review and assessment''.
>
> The panel has four months to probe allegations that the agency
> failed to uphold its own environmental, social, and financial
> policies in lending money for the dam, and charges that the
> Entidad Binacional Yacyreta (EBY), the Argentine-Paraguayan
> commission that operates the dam, violated the terms of its loan
> agreements.
>
> The IDB's executive directors, who have been waiting to see
> what their World Bank counterparts would do, are now under
> pressure to follow suit or ''look bad'', as one official puts it.
>
> Official and non-governmental sources say the IDB board is
> likely to authorise their own probe, but that they may put off a
> formal decision until after the agency's annual meeting, scheduled
> for Mar. 17-19 in Barcelona, Spain.
>
> The two banks have lent some 1.6 billion dollars since 1979 for
> Yacyreta. Each agency last October began separate preliminary
> reviews to determine the merit of a written complaint submitted by
> Sobrevivencia, the Paraguayan affiliate of Friends of the Earth.
>
> The complaint alleges the agencies failed to assess the
> environmental and social damage the dam would cause; mitigate the
> harm done; consult local residents in drawing up resettlement
> plans for communities flooded by Yacyreta; supervise and hold
> their borrower to contractual obligations; and withhold money when
> it became clear the terms of their loans were being violated.
>
> The banks' preliminary investigations yielded enough evidence
> to recommend full probes.
>
> While acknowledging difficulties, the World Bank's project
> managers ''do not agree that the problems which have occurred and
> their possible consequences for the local population are the
> result of any alleged mismanagement or violation of the Bank's
> policies and procedures,'' according to a copy of their response
> to the complaint obtained by IPS.
>
> They say they were within their rights to continue funding the
> dam even after problems came to light, because ''the exercise of
> available legal remedies is not a requirement but a discretionary
> tool''.
>
> In their response to the complaint, IDB officials say the
> agency's inspection regulations rule out probing loans that have
> been disbursed -- in effect, pre-empting the case against loans
> that funded dam construction. They say the only loan that remains
> undisbursed, and therefore subject to inspection, was meant to
> mitigate some of the environmental and social harm.
>
> In its decision, the World Bank's executive board ''invites the
> Inspection Panel to undertake a review of the existing problems of
> the Yacyreta project in the areas of environment and resettlement
> and provide an assessment of the adequacy of the Action Plan as
> agreed between the Bank and the two countries concerned''.
>
> World Bank officials say the ''review and assessment'' will be
> as thorough as any ''investigation''.
>
> This is only the second time the board has backed a full-scale
> probe since the inspection panel's creation in 1993, however. Had
> it not, observers suggest, it would have risked the credibility of
> the inspection process.
>
> Perhaps for this reason, World Bank President James Wolfensohn
> himself is said to have backed the probe and pushed the board to
> an unexpected vote Friday, at the end of what had been an informal
> meeting.
>
> Wolfensohn has made accountability one of the watchwords of his
> presidency, and has thus created expectations the Bank must live
> up to. At stake is the Bank's reputation among its NGO critics,
> and among parliamentary watchdogs in member countries.
>
> Dana Clark, an attorney at the Washington-based Centre for
> International Environmental Law, says she hopes the board's
> decision ''marks a renewed commitment to the accountability and
> transparency that are the hallmarks of the inspection panel
> process.''
>
> The panel's preliminary report notes that although the Yacyreta
> project has clearly harmed people and the environment, inspectors
> have yet to determine if ''the allegations of serious violations
> of policy are well founded.''
> (END/IPS/AA/YJC/97)
>
> Origin: Washington/ENVIRONMENT-LATIN AMERICA/
> ----
>
> [c] 1997, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
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> ** End of text from cdp:headlines **
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Thanks for sending this along. I can't believe that the dam is
"67 km" wide, that's almost 42 miles.
I suppose that it is inevitable that when you build something
like this, people get hurt. I suppose that it is also inevitable that
some people who, given the time this has been going on, hold on to or
even improve their facilities in the area to be flooded so as to have a
stronger claim against whoever it is building the project.
There is essentially annual flooding along Paraguay's rivers and
people are resettled, only to move back when the waters receeds. You see
the same thing in the US.
I know nothing about the compensation schemes, my question, which
comes way too late is "Why did they build it in the first place."
Couldn't they have somehow let some of the Itaipu power flow to
Argentina?
If Argentina wanted to dam the Parana, why didn't they do it on
their own soil which would be closer to Buenos Aires and Cordoba, their
two industrial centers? Like Itaipu, there are going to be a lot of
transmission losses to get that power south where they need it. Possibly
the government of Stroessner was more willing to have his citizens
flooded out than were the dictators in Argentina.
I don't have anything to do with any of this but, as I said, I
lived for 2 years in Ciudad Del Este, Paraguay right next to Itaipu.
Coincidentally, I also lived for 2 years at Embalse, Argentina
where the Argentines were building their first Canadian CANDU reactor and
power plant, another scandal plagued project.
I think it has turned out OK but, it was a disaster financially
for the Canadians. "Embalse is Spanish for "reservoir" and the cooling
systems take their water form the existing embalse, hence the name of the
town. One question which troubled people was "What if the dam which
formed the embalse broke or was breeched in some manner, thus draining
the embalse. Where would the cooling water come from then to safely cool
down the reactor?" I assume they solved that one but, I don't know how.
Dave Johnson